A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support. --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

It would not be an exaggeration to say that without Thomas Paine there may not have been an American Revolution. At the very least, it may well have been of a substantially different nature and character, and our government may be far more plutocratic than it was designed to be.

Yet Paine is often absent from broad-brush overviews of the American Revolution, or simply relegated to the title of "pamphleteer."

Part of the reason for this is that he wrote "The Age Of Reason," which was a finely-tuned attack on organized religion. After "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man," two books that were massive best-sellers, "Reason" caused many Americans - then in the midst of a religious revival - to turn against Paine. Thus he died in relative obscurity in New York City, and today even the whereabouts of his body is unknown (an interesting story that Harvey J. Kaye tells well).

His critics notwithstanding, Thomas Paine was in many ways the father of modern liberalism, and thus one of the most important of the founders of what both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson referred to as that "liberal" experiment, the United States of America.

Liberals, after all, founded our nation. They were skeptical of the power of any institution - be it corporate (the Boston Tea Party was an anti-globalization protest against the world's largest transnational corporation, the East India Company), religious (Ben Franklin left Massachusetts for Philadelphia during his childhood in part because they were still hanging witches in the outlying regions), or governmental (the "kingly oppressions" such as the power of a king to make war, referred to by Madison and later quoted by Lincoln). It wasn't FDR who first seriously promoted the progressive income tax in the USA: it was Thomas Paine. It wasn't LBJ who invented anti-poverty programs by introducing Medicare, housing assistance, and food-stamp programs: Thomas Paine proposed versions of all of these. It wasn't Jack Kennedy who first talked seriously about international disarmament: it was Thomas Paine. And Teddy Roosevelt wasn't the first American to talk about the "living wage," or ways that corporate "maximum wage" wink-and-nod agreements could be broken up: it was Thomas Paine. Even Woodrow Wilson's inheritance tax, designed to prevent family empires from taking over our nation, was the idea of Thomas Paine, as was the suggestion for old-age pensions as part of a social safety net known today as Social Security.

Paine thought that the best way to build a strong democracy was to tax the wealthy to give the poor bootstraps by which they could pull themselves up. He proposed helping out young families with the expense of raising children (a forerunner to our income tax exemptions for children), a fund to provide housing and food for the poor (a forerunner to housing vouchers and food stamps), and a reliable and predictable pension for all workers in their old age (a forerunner to Social Security). He also suggested that all nations should reduce their armaments by 90 percent, to ensure world peace. Summarizing, Paine noted:

"When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

In his marvelous biography of Thomas Paine, Harvey J. Kaye explores all these issues and much, much more. In truth, it's difficult to review this book as if it were merely a biography - it's really one of the very best histories of the Revolutionary Era in print, using Thomas Paine as the pivot point for telling stories that range from well before the Revolutionary War all the way up to the present day.

Kaye shows how Paine was a powerful influence not only at a national level, but also on the states. He writes about how Thomas Paine helped promote an early draft of the Pennsylvania constitution, wherein "they provided for a one-house legislature, annual elections, voting an office-holding rights for all taxpaying men, and term limits. (The drafters even entertained setting limits to the accumulation of property!)"

Later in the book, Kaye notes:

Observing that Monarchy and aristocracy entail "excess and inequality of taxation" and threw the "great mass of the community ... into poverty and discontent," Paine added the question of class to the brief. "When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the work-house and youth the gallows, something," Paine declared, "must be wrong in the system of government." And he bluntly asked, "Why is that scarcely any are executed but the poor?"

It is positively refreshing to read history from somebody who understands the time and the era. By contrast, Thomas Jefferson's most recent biographer describes him as a hypocrite and implies he was an utopianist fool, and John Adams' biographer reinvents our second president - who tried his best to destroy American democracy with the Alien and Sedition Acts - as a modern and noble pseudo-Republican.

But Kaye lays it all bare. Noting that Jefferson well understood the importance of Paine's contribution to Jefferson's anti-Federalist "Republican" movement (now known as The Democratic Party), Kaye notes:

In the spring of 1791 Jefferson had hailed the first part of Rights of Man. Then serving as secretary of state, he saw in it an antidote to the rise of antirepublican sentiments expressed in writings like Discourses on Davila, a series of newspaper essays penned anonymously by Vice President John Adams warning against the dangers of democratic politics and praising aristocratic governments.

In the next chapter, Kaye adds:

Outfitted with Paine's arguments, Republican newspaperman attacked the Fderalists for their "monarchical and aristocratic" ambitions and pretensions.

When Paine was attacked by British conservatives not as a liberal or a democrat, but as a staymaker (it was actually his father who helped make women's undergarments and dresses), Kaye points out that the Aurora - one of the more prominent of the pro-Jefferson anti-Federalist newspapers of the day - published a commentary in December 1792 that said:

It is well enough in England to run down the rights of man [speaking of Paine's book], because the author of those inimitable pamphlets was a staymaker; but in the United States all such proscriptions of certain classes of citizens, or occupations, should be avoided; for liberty will never be safe or durable in a republic till every citizen thinks it as much his duty to take care of the state, as to take care of his family, and until an indifference to any public question shall be considered a public offence.

After treating the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary eras with extraordinary insight and detail, Kaye shows how Paine's influence continued in America. He chronicles the rise of the "workingmen's movement" through the latter part of the 1700s and early 1800s, leading to the creation in the mid-1830s of the National Trades' Union. "However, the Panic of 1837 devastated the economy and, with it, workers' capacities to organize," Kaye writes. "Still, the worker's ideals and aspirations did not die but persisted in the initiatives of a generation of democratic intellectuals who would continue to draw upon Paine's arguments."

By the 1840s, the battles between progressive Democrats citing Paine and conservative Whigs were heating up all over again. A group inspired in part by Paine, the Young Americans, were split in 1845 by debates over Manifest Destiny, but, Kaye notes, "The group's original Painite vision lived on, however, in the labors of the nation's greatest democratic writers, Melville and Whiteman. ...to both, Paine was democracy's first champion."

From here, Kaye carries us through the whole arc of the 1800s, up to and through the Wilson administration, Eugene Debs, through the Great Depression, the presidency of FDR, through WWII, and into the Vietnam conflict. At each step along the way, he finds the inspiration of Thomas Paine in the forward progress of Americans who believe in the deepest and most profound principles of democracy and liberty.

For example, from the Vietnam era:

SDS members of the early 1960s proudly conceived of themselves as renewing America's revolutionary heritage, with Paine standing at the heart of it. [Todd] Gitlin [SDS President] would recount of a November 1965 antiwar rally: "Carl Oglesby [then president of SDS] stole the show ... by treating the war as the product of an imperial history ... But Oglesby, the son of an Akron Rubber worker, also self-consciously invoked 'our dead revolutionaries' Jefferson and Paine against Lyndon Johnson and [national security adviser] McGeorge Bundy. He romantically sumoned up a once-democratic America against the 'colossus of ... our American corporate system.'"

Even many years later, SDS veterans would have recourse to Paine when recollecting their early activist days and what they were about. In his own memoir, Tom Hayden would write, "The goal of the sixties was, in a sense, the completion of the vision of the early revolutionaries and the abolitionists, for Tom Paine and Frederick Douglass wanted even more than the Bill of Rights or Emancipation Proclamation. True Democrats, they wanted the fulfillment of the American promise."

Bringing us to the present moment, Kaye points out that modern conservatives are undertaking a massive and well-funded effort to re-write history, characterizing anti-democratic men from the Revolutionary Era as Adams and Hamilton as true champions of democracy, and trying to recast the firebrand revolutionary and liberal Thomas Paine as a conservative. As noted early in the book, they even are stealing lines from Paine, such as Reagan's quoting a Paine line from Common Sense that: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

But Kaye won't let them get away with it:

For all their citations of Paine and his lines, conservatives do not - and truly cannot - embrace him and his arguments. Bolstered by capital, firmly in command of the Republican Party, and politically ascendant for a generation, they have initiated and instituted policies and programs that fundamentally contradict Paine's own vision and commitments. They have subordinated the Republic - the res publica, the commonwealth, the public good - to the marketplace and private advantage. They have furthered the interests of corporations and the rich over those of working people, their families, unions, and communities and overseen a concentration of wealth and power that, recalling the Gilded Age, has corrupted and enervated American democratic life and politics. And they have carried on culture wars that have divided the nation and undermined the wall separating church and state. Moreover, they have pursued domestic and foreign policies that have made the nation both less free and less secure politically, economically, environmentally, and militarily. Even as they have spoken of advancing freedom and empowering citizens, they have sought to discharge or at least constrain America's democratic impulse and aspiration. In fact, while poaching lines from Paine, they and their favorite intellectuals have disclosed their real ambitions and affections by once again declaring the "end of history" and promoting the lives of Founders like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who n decided contrast to Paine scorned democracy and feared "the people."

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America is not only one of the finest biographies of this great Founder ever written, it is also one of the best histories of the United States of America in print.

9.03.2012

Last week, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan claimed he'd accomplished an athletic feat: He had run a marathon in under three hours. The claim came during an interview on radio hostHugh Hewitt's program.

"H[ugh] H[ewitt]: Are you still running?

P[aul] R[yan]: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don't run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.

HH: But you did run marathons at some point?

PR: Yeah, but I can't do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.

HH: I've just gotta ask, what's your personal best?

PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.

HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University ...

PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah."

A "sub-3:00" marathon? The congressman is known for his athletic prowess, but that's still a blistering pace. According to a nifty calculator on the Runner's World website, in order to complete a marathon in, say, 2:59, the calculator suggests Ryan ran a mile in 5 minutes, 37 seconds on average. Then he'd have to sustain that pace for 26.2 miles.

The speed is so fast that Runner's Worldchecked his claim — and couldn't find it. It did locate one marathon he participated in: "Grandma's Marathon" in Duluth, Minn., on June 23, 1990.

He finished in 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds.

Friday, a spokesman for Ryan told the magazine the Republican vice presidential candidate has indeed run just one marathon. And, Ryan issued this statement:

"The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin — who ran Boston last year — reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."

Runners posting on the Runner's World website are outraged: Many are listing their own PR (personal records) with date and marathon name.

Not impressed. How fast did you claim you ran that marathon, again ? Paul Ryan caught fibbing by Runner's World.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan made the startling claim in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt that he had run a sub 3 hour marathon. About a 2:50 "something." Works out to 6 minute and 48 seconds per mile.Not only would this have put him in the elite class of human runners, it would have made him faster than a lot of Tevis endurance race horses, which average about 7 to 8 minutes per mile, for the winning times, and at the slower rate of about 4.5 mph if they want to complete the race for the buckle.Runner's World magazine took it upon themselves to fact check Paul Ryan's time claim for the marathon he supposedly competed in, searched 11 years of records, and found that there was exactly one recorded instance of a Paul D. Ryan finishing the 1990 Grandma's Marathon of Duluth, Minnesota, in 1990, with a time of ....• 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.That means that the runner is traveling at the much more pedestrian rate of ... 9 minutes per mile.By comparison, this year's Olympic marathon winner, Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda, ran the race in 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 1 second, which rounds off to one mile ticked off every....... 4.88 minutesAt first, in response to Runner's World, a spokesperson for the Romney- Ryan campaign said "His comments on the show were to the best of his recollection."Many of the comments at Runner's World were along the lines of this: "How could anyone NOT remember the details of their personal best like that ?" and "If you are a runner, the fastest way to lose your credibility among other runners, is to lie about your times."Ryan finally issued a correction for himself, after the media outcry.This follows the series of fact checks that were done following Ryan's now notorious RNC Convention speech in Tampa, where Ryan made claims that were not true about many things, such as:1. The closure of the General Motors plant in Janesville, implying it happened under this administration. (Shut down in 2008, when Bush was President.)2. Medicare. (Ryan's own budget called for drastic Medicare cuts).3. Deficit. (Bush era tax cuts, Bush era foreign wars, and Bush era not putting the war funding IN the budgets, instead doing it on a contingency appropriations basis as a gimmick, to hide the fact that the wars were done on credit.) Ryan voted for those tax cuts and those wars.4. Safety Net - Ryan quote - "The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves...." (Ryan budget performs 62% of its cuts to programs that benefit the people with the lowest incomes, such the working poor, and elderly poor nursing home patients who are on Medicaid. )5. The world Credit Rating Downgrade, dished out by Standard & Poor. The Republican party threatened to shut down the Federal government on this issue of raising the debt ceiling, which also would have caused a default. You can't complain about debt, while voting to decrease government revenues (refusing to restore tax rates from Clinton era which did balance the budget) at the same time. If you perform a draconian cut to domestic programs, as was proposed by Ryan's Roadmap, you perform a draconian cut to consumer demand that is supposed to raise the GDP.Ryan, to the best of the nation's recollection, can't remember what he's been doing in Congress for the past dozen years, if that is the same Paul Ryan who was giving the speech in Tampa. It's so bad, even the athletic and health worlds are noticing.With 65 days to go before Tues, November 6th, if Paul Ryan told a lie every 2 hours and 50 minutes during the working day, that would be 208 lies, or "loss of recollections" before the election. Followed by the need to clarify the record 208 times, or issue another denial, and dig in further. Talk about a marathon... He's buff, he's tough, he's off the cuff, puffed and guffed. The Romney campaign will somehow have to reduce this to a more acceptable rate, (and forbid anyone from lighting a match anywhere nearby) while at the same time proposing more tax cuts.... good luck with that split !

7.18.2012

"The Actual Quote:If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

6.09.2012

19 Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations, which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments, as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard, by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that, for the efficient management of our common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

20 I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discrimination's. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

21 This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

22 The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

23 Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

24 It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

25 There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

5.28.2012

Bill Maher did his best with this parody on Mitt Romney's Mormon church and their history of polygamy to take a shot at the crazy Republican birthers who were still out there this week pretending they are not fully aware that President Obama is a citizen of the United States.

2.09.2012

The Dog That Cornered Osama Bin Laden

When U.S. President Barack Obama went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, last week for a highly publicized, but very private meeting with the commando team that killed Osama bin Laden, only one of the 81 members of the super-secret SEAL DevGru unit was identified by name: Cairo, the war dog.

Cairo, like most canine members of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs, is a Belgian Malinois. The Malinois breed is similar to German shepherds but smaller and more compact, with an adult male weighing in the 30-kilo range.

(German shepherds are still used as war dogs by the American military but the lighter, stubbier Malinois is considered better for the tandem parachute jumping and rappelling operations often undertaken by SEAL teams. Labrador retrievers are also favoured by various military organizations around the world.)

Like their human counterparts, the dog SEALs are highly trained, highly skilled, highly motivated special ops experts, able to perform extraordinary military missions by SEa, Air and Land (thus the acronym).

The dogs carry out a wide range of specialized duties for the military teams to which they are attached: With a sense of smell 40 times greater than a human’s, the dogs are trained to detect and identify both explosive material and hostile or hiding humans.

The dogs are twice as fast as a fit human, so anyone trying to escape is not likely to outrun Cairoor his buddies.

The dogs, equipped with video cameras, also enter certain danger zones first, allowing their handlers to see what’s ahead before humans follow.

As I mentioned before, SEAL dogs are even trained parachutists, jumping either in tandem with their handlers or solo, if the jump is into water.

Last year canine parachute instructor Mike Forsythe and his dog Cara set the world record for highest man-dog parachute deployment, jumping from more than 30,100 feet up — the altitude transoceanic passenger jets fly at. Both Forsythe and Cara were wearing oxygen masks and skin protectors for the jump.

Here’s a photo from that jump, taken by Andy Anderson for K9 Storm Inc. (more about those folks shortly).

As well, the dogs are faithful, fearless and ferocious — incredibly frightening and efficient attackers.

I have seen it reported repeatedly that the teeth of SEAL war dogs are replaced with titanium implants that are stronger, sharper and scare-your-pants-off intimidating, but a U.S. Military spokesman has denied that charge, so I really don’t know (never having seen a canine SEAL face-to-face). I do know that I’ve never seen a photo of a war dog with anything even vaguely resembling a set of shiny metal chompers.

When the SEAL DevGru team (usually known by its old designation, Team 6) hit bin Laden’sPakistan compound on May 2, Cairo’s feet would have been four of the first on the ground.

And like the human SEALs, Cairo was wearing super-strong, flexible body Armour and outfitted with high-tech equipment that included “doggles” — specially designed and fitted dog googles with night-vision and infrared capability that would even allow Cairo to see human heat forms through concrete walls.

Now where on earth would anyone get that kind of incredibly niche hi-tech doggie gear?

From Winnipeg, of all places.

Jim and Glori Slater’s Manitoba hi-tech mom-and-pop business, K9 Storm Inc., has a deserved worldwide reputation for designing and manufacturing probably the best body Armour available for police and military dogs. Working dogs in 15 countries around the world are currently protected by their K9 Storm body Armour.

Jim Slater was a canine handler on the Winnipeg Police Force when he crafted a Kevlar protective jacket for his own dog, Olaf, in the mid-1990s. Soon Slater was making body Armour for other cop dogs, then the Canadian military and soon the world.

The standard K9 Storm vest also has a load-bearing harness system that makes it ideal for tandem rappelling and parachuting.

And then there are the special hi-tech add-ons that made the K9 Storm especially appealing to the U.S. Navy SEALs, who bought four of K9 Storm Inc.’s top-end Intruder “canine tactical assault suits” last year for $86,000. You can be sure Cairo was wearing one of those four suits when he jumped into bin Laden’s lair.

Here’s an explanation of all the K9 Storm Intruder special features:

Just as the Navy SEALS and other elite special forces are the sharp point of the American military machine, so too are their dogs at the top of a canine military heirarchy.

In all, the U.S. military currently has about 2,800 active-duty dogs deployed around the world, with roughly 600 now in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Several of the photos I have included here are from Foreign Policy, as you will see. Other photos are from K9 Storm Inc.

As for the ethics of sending dogs to war, that’s pretty much a moot point, don’t you think? If it’s ethical to send humans into combat, then why not dogs?

At least the U.S. now treats its war dogs as full members of the military. At the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. combat dogs there were designated as “surplus military equipment” and left behind when American forces pulled out.

Amount of Recognized Cancer-Causing Carcinogens Released into Air = 1st

Amount of Hazardous Waste Generated = 2nd

Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions = 1st

Richest 20% of families have avg incomes 7.9 larger than poorest 20% and 2.8 times larer than middle 20%

From the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, the avg income of the poorest 20% has increased $2,657…the middle 20% has increased $4,528.

…the average income of the richest 20% increased $32,813 [in that 20 year span]A 2002 report found that 86% of nursing homes in Texas did not meet federal standards governing quality of care, 94% of nursing homes did not meet minimum staffing levels, and 39% of facilities had a violation that caused actual harm to nursing home residents or placed them at risk for death or serious injury.

The average nursing home in Texas provided just 21 minutes of daily care by registered nurses for each resident, or less than half of the minimum required by federal standards.Percentage of Population Uninsured = 1st

Percentage of Non-Elderly Uninsured = 1st

Percentage of Low Income Covered by Medicaid = 42nd

Percentage…with employer Based Health Insurance = 46th

Total State Government Health Expenditures as Percent of the GSP = 33rd

Per Capita State Spending on Mental Health = 48th

Percentage of Population Physically Active = 41st

Physicians – 43rd

Dentists = 42nd

Registered Nurses = 43rd

2005, the birth rate for ages 15-19 was 61.6 per 1000, compared to 40.5 in the U.S.

2001 statewide survey of Texas high school students, almost half had engaged in sexual intercourse at least once. (37.4% of 9th graders)

Among currently sexually active students, only about half reported that they or their partner had used a condom…Only 10% reported that they or their partner used birth control pills.

22.6% of sexually active students had used drugs or alcohol at the time of their last sexual intercourse.

About Me

Born in Shichido neighborhood of Sakai, outside of Osaka Japan, lived in same neighborhood that Sen No Rikyu was
from, went to school in Michigan, moved to Minnesota to study with
Dainin Katagiri Roshi, moved to Mashiko, Japan to do 3 year
apprenticeship with National Living Treasure Tatsuzo Shimaoka,
established my own kiln and pottery in Mashiko, Japan. Came back to
Minneapolis the summer of 2007. Awarded a McKnight Residency for spring
of 2008 at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. Currently working at my studio in Minneapolis.

Creative Philosophy:

I make and use handmade functional pottery as an antidote to the modern tendency toward the use of things made by machine, things made without heart or beauty, for the mere goal of profit. What makes human beings unique? Not our ability to make things—insects can do this; nor our ability to reason—in the near future, machines will be able to do this. What makes human beings unique is our ability to recognize and cherish beauty. My goal is to make things for everyday use that allow the users to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, take a breath, and observe the natural beauty that surrounds them."